“We make men without chests and we expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and we are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."- C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

Monday, January 11, 2010

Only Yo' Mama Loves You, But She Could Be Jivin', too!

(AP) A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues than youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.

The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counselors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general. [...]

Beside the fact that so many of the students in the study don't read Grandpa John's daily, how could this be? The world has never known the affluence that we enjoy.

What must life be like for today's youth to express so much anxiety and depression? They are the most informed generation ever. They know about every danger and crisis that confronts us today. These young people are aware that every single thing in life can kill, injure, or make them sick. Their food, the air, the climate, and the universe conspire with all that is deadly. Even more significantly, the people and the institutions among which they live are full of evil and bad intent. Their culture's history has committed nothing but mayhem upon all mankind. The human race itself is heading for destruction while destroying the entire planet.

After all the poetic notions and flowery rhetoric are deconstructed, today's youth are informed that their ultimate meaning is to become food for worms while being recycled with an outside chance of making a meaningful genetic contribution to future generations along the way.

And with all this knowledge and enlightenment they are anxious and depressed. Go figure. In my youth the only concern was running with scissors. It was not to avoid being stabbed or poking an eye out, but rather damaging the household's only pair of scissors.